Finishing a sentence
by JLawismyinspiration
Summary: Reunionfic! Set somewhere around Stolen earth. Kinda AU. TenRose


They were all gathered in the console room. Drinking tea, laughing, talking about the old days, of far off planets and aliens and running for your lives. No one mentioned the empty streets outside, the abandoned houses that the daleks had raided, or their own impending doom.

Donna and Martha sat on the beat up couch, discussing their many adventures. Captain Jack Harkness sat across from them, sipping his tea. Mickey stood behind Captain Jack, and the two men were smiling at the women's seemingly exaggerated(but probably not) and terrific adventures. Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones were standing across the console from them, looking slightly awestruck and talking quietly. The only person missing was the Doctor.

He had gone out earlier, dashing out of the TARDIS, yelling for them to wait here and then something none of them heard. Shrugging and looking around at each other, the six people settled down in the TARDIS, waiting for the Doctors' return.

Five hours later, then stories had run thin and the lights on the TARDIS had dimmed themselves. Captain Jack and Mickey had gone off to sleep hours ago, and Gwen and Ianto had taken to leaning on the couch across from Donna and Martha. Martha was in the middle of the first time she had met Captain Jack the other three still sipping tea, when the door on the TARDIS hummed. They all stood, eyes toward it when it swung open.

"Finally! We've been waiting for ages! Where-" Martha stopped mid-rant when she saw the person who had just stepped inside and closed the door was, in fact, not the Doctor. Instead, a girl(really a woman, but a girl to Martha) about nineteen or twenty stood there wearing a purple leather jacket and jeans. Her blonde hair fell slightly past her shoulders, and she had an enormous gun slung over her shoulder. Setting the gun down on the floor, she turned to the four people.

"Hi." she said, "Is the Doctor here?". Her voice was clear and hopeful.

"No, he went out. To do something" Martha said slowly, wondering who this person was and how they managed to get into the TARDIS.

"Do you know where?" the mysterious girl asked.

"No." said Martha. A part of her wanted to demand to know this girls' motives, but the larger part of her mind told her to keep quiet.

"Oh." Her face fell slightly, but she did not say anything else. She went over to the console and ran her fingers along it. At her touch, the TARDIS hummed happily and the lights got brighter.

"I know girl," she said, "I missed you too," the TARDIS hummed more forcefully, and she laughed, "Him too."

The girl was paying no attention to the four people staring opened mouthed at her, all holding cups of tea. She simply walked around the console, running her fingers along it and smiling softly. She seemed to exude happiness, this girl, Martha thought, as the girl made another circle around the console. They had all forgotten to sit down, now observing the girl. What was she doing here? How did she get here? Who was she?

_**Who was she?**_

"Excuse me," Martha said, finding her voice, "but, who are you?"

The girl looked up, smiled, but didn't answer. She simply continued her path around the console. Martha looked at the other three, who simply shrugged.

"What is your name?" asked Donna.

Another small smile.

"What are you doing here?" That was Gwen.

A soft laugh.

"How do you know the Doctor?" Ianto.

The girl looked up, more quickly than before, and for a moment, a look of pain flashed across her face, but before it vanished, and a second later she was back circling the console.

The Doctor. He was the key to finding out this girl was, why she was here. The four people lowered themselves down around the couch, close together. The girl did not seem to notice.

"Okay," Martha whispered, "I don't think she's a threat, but I feel like we should do something."

"But what," replied Donna, "She won't even tell us her name."

They looked over at the girl again, who had wandered into the corner of the TARDIS. She was looking at a jean jacket that was placed over the railing.

"You shouldn't touch that," said Martha quickly, "He doesn't like it when people touch that."

"Why not?" asked Gwen.

"It was his companions'," answered Donna, "She left it here when she got trapped in a parallel universe."

"She can't come back?" asked Ianto.

"No." said Donna.

"What else do you know about her?" asked Gwen.

"Nothing really," said Martha, "She got trapped during the Battle of Canary Wharf. Can't get back. Her name was Rose," she paused before continuing, "He loves her."

"That he does," said Donna, smiling sadly at the cup in her hands. "I found one of her jackets my day here. Asked him about it. All he said, it was his friends, and he'd lost her. And her name was Rose."

"Rose what?" asked Gwen.

"Tyler. Rose Tyler." But it wasn't Donna or Martha who answered, it was Jack. He had entered the room again, and softly adding, "She was beautiful."

"Still is, I'd like to think."

Jack froze in his steps, turning towards the girl, as the others stood up. She was leaning against the railing where the jacket lay, smiling slyly at them, but her eyes were full of happiness.

"My," she said, "Jacket."

"ROSIE!" Jack flew across the room, pulling her into a huge embrace. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her head into shoulder.

"I missed you," she murmured, as he clutched tighter onto her, laughing hysterically.

Finally letting her down she turned to face the four others in the room.

"Oh my god," said Martha, tears filling her eyes, "You're here."

She smiled in response.

"Rose Tyler, at your service," she said, but before she could continue, Mickey bounded into the room.

"What's going on in here? Oh, hey Rose."

"Hi," she said as she hugged him, "haven't seen you in a while. What's it been? A week?"

Mickey and Jack smiled at her joke, Jack wrapping his arms around her once more but the other four just stood staring.

"I can't believe you're here," said Donna, "I'm Donna by the way. This is Martha, Gwen and Ianto."

"I can't believe you're actually here!" exclaimed Martha with awe.

Rose smiled, "Me neither. In fact I-

But the rest of her sentence was lost as the door of the TARDIS swung open. The Doctor walk in with his usual swagger, flicking switches on the console, paying no attention to the people sitting stiffly on the couch, the two men, one who seemed to be trying not to smile, the other who kept looking back at the girl behind him, while tears filled her eyes. The six, now seven people stood silent and frozen as the Doctor circled the console, much like Rose had. The TARDIS started up its murmuring again, and this time it was the Doctor who spoke to her.

"Yes, yes I know-, no that can't be right, I told you, you should know. No, I know you miss her too, I know. But she can't come back, I'm sorry. Rose Tyler in the TARDIS, impossible! Check my what? No, no, that's not possible. But it must be wrong. The scanner says she's standing right-

"Here"

The voice was just a whisper, quieter even, as the Doctor froze.

And again, louder, "I'm standing right here."

Right.

Here.

_Right._

_Here._

_**Right**_

_**Here.**_

His head snapped up and he saw her, but no, it was a dream, it was a hallucination, a vision, because she couldn't possibly-

But she was.

Standing in front of him, with tears streaming down her beautiful, beautiful face. Rose Tyler the girl he'd dreamed about, had nightmares about.

The girl he loved with all of his two hearts, a foot away from him.

In a split second, he crossed the distance, and she flung herself into his arms. He caught her, and held tight around her waist. She was shaking with sobs, her head buried in his shoulder as he desperately clung tighter, as though she would slip away. Because she had slipped away before, and he couldn't bear to think about it happening again.

But no.

No, she was here safe in his arms. Safe from daleks and cybermen and other threatening creature. They stood there for what felt like hours, him holding onto her with everything he had her shaking whispering his name over and over again. he hadn't even realized he was crying. She leaned back, but her kept his arms firmly around her. She looked up at him with her beautiful bright eyes, and smiling through her own tears, wiped the tears off his face. He wiped her own tears away, never breaking eye contact.

She smiled the most beautiful smile.

He leaned down to kiss her.

She thought her first kiss would the Doctor would be rockets and fireworks and bombs going off inside her head, but it wasn't like that.

It wasn't like that at all.

Instead it was light, like fire trickling down her without burning. It was watching the end of the world without feeling the flames. It was seeing the stars up close for the first time. It was beauty, it was magic, it was longing, and it was two people who had been apart for far too long.

They broke apart, still clutching each other, willing the other not to let go. The Doctor didn't know if he ever could.

She looked up at him, and he wiped a stray tear from her eye. "Finish the sentence," she said softly. He smiled, and brushed his lips against her forehead before whispering,

"Rose Tyler, I love you."


End file.
